The GeoCitie$ Goldmine o' Conspiracy
A Compilation
 
 
 
disinformation@geocities.com
5/22/98
 
It has come to my attention that GeoCities actively pursues anyone who dares criticise them, bitches to the Webmsater with some bogus legal posturing, and pressures them into nuking the offending site to keep it from making Geo look bad. (Guess how I know...) And I'm not talking about sites under Geo's domain, under Geo's jurisdiction and control, no, we're talking the 'Net at large here. A guy I know was saying, "You cannot find GeoCities criticism out there on the 'Net; Geo squelches it quickly...." or something to that general effect. I've looked, as far as I can tell, mine's about the only one out there (via Infoseek, Hotbot, etc.) with any substance to it. [Update: Since this writing I've found a number of Geo criticism sites and horror stories; they're not on search engines, they're on Webrings.]  This particular person's page has been zapped by Geo a number of times, for criticising GC's censorship (more like disinformation) policies. Well folks, just for the record, my site has been nuked by Geo too...from GC, from Xoom... from Netcom too if they find it (unless Netcom has a knowledgeable lawyer handy, in which case they will know that this page is fully legal and protected by the ever-so-wonderful First Amendment, which guarantees the freedom of speech of all American citizens like myself....)
 
This same guy who complained about Geocities' censorship (of other people's servers!) also proposed a possible explanation--yep, it's that one again, now everyone repeat after me--GREED. Seems that, in order for an advertiser to be interested in marketing on a company's website (GC makes most all it's money from these ads), the company has to be well-liked and popular with the public, else the not-so-good image of the company whose site is advertised on may 'rub off' on the advertiser and their company, etc. Marketers don't want to advertise somewhere that offends people, for example, you probably won't see a GAP billboard painted on the side of a whorehouse. Nor will you see any reputable company teaming up with Kathy Lee Gifford (sweat-shop slavedriver extraordinare) or Cyber Promotions (the biggest and dirtiest bunch of spammers anywhere). Think about it, if there are thousands of pages (and were it not for Geo disinformation, there most certainly would be) devoted to attacking every aspect of Geocities, and Geo-hate pages everywhere, what would those marketers think? Yep. Geo Whore House, steer clear! Leper colony! Advertise there and die! GeoCities Bad For Business... Keep it up, Geo. Delete as many pages as you can, and try to get people kicked off the 'Net for good (TOSsed) by compalining to ISPs...save a little more bandwidth for me...again, I've got South Park vids to download, Anarchists Cookbooks to leech, Winnukes to do, and illicit software to find cracks and pirated serial numbers for. And those marketers have to keep on marketing, and making ever-larger GIF animations to put misleading little ads on.  It's people like you, Geo, that make the real criminals' lives that much easier...
 
 
"You're not a burglar, you're an encyclopedia salesman, aren't you?" (From a famous Monty Python sketch)
5/18/98
 
New and noteworthy, GC is recruiting all geo-willing members as commisioned book salesmen, paying a cut for books that people buy thru the member's page. The deal is, bastardize your Geocities homepage with ads for books from amazon.com, and if any sucke...err, reader is so entralled by your green-eyed endorsements that they actually purchase the book right off your site, you get a slice of amazon's profits (Needless to say, that while you're selling the books, Geocities is getting a much larger slice than you by doing absolutely nothing and letting you slave for them...hmm, all this time I thought the pimps were on the south side instead of a California corporate cubicle...) There have got to be some laws against this kind of stuff...I get the feeling some of the salesmens' parents don't have any clue that they're salesmen...and lemme guess: They need your real name, home address, credit card numbers...to pay you for your sales? Well, here's a clip off a real Geo propoganda mailing...
 
 New vein in the conspiracy Goldmine
 3/22/98
Yep, our dear old 'friends' at GeoCities strike once again. "Haven't you posted enough GeoCities conspiracies?", you quip? Well, Geo seems to be just a goldmine for conspiracy page material, so much so that all the GC conspiracy stuff has been dumped off onto this seperate page. Take for example their newest ploy, in which anyone under 13 must either pay for their account or falsify their signup information, else live in fear that your site will be trashed at any time without warning. Geo claims some new government reguations have caused this new policy (specifically, the CDA II which hasn't even been voted upon yet) but you can rest pretty assuredly that greed is again to blame. The main reason GeoCities values as a whole the millions of pages on their system is because they attract eyes to their advertisements. When you think about it, in GC's eyes that's your only purpose there. The reason the under-13 pages are being deleted,  is for the reason that 'kids' are statistically much less adept at creating homepages with excellent content that people will want to come and see...to Geo, it's dead weight. They are losing money on many kid-pages. Don't get me wrong, plenty of young folks have created wonderful, entertaining and informative pages on Geocities and elsewhere, I have seen many ... but the good likely do not outweigh the dead-weight pages and it is unwise for GC, as a business, to continue to store and serve them.
Kids are the ones least able to pay for their Web space, and it seems to make little sense to require payment by those least able to pay. I do not put much faith in Geo's explanation that their decision is due to some government regulations...I have been lied to by GeoCities many times, and have the sneaking suspicion that I'm not the only one. Their privacy policy page is a good start to establishing a level of openness and trust, however, it is sadly too little and too late.
        --Information from The Omega and the now-nonexistant GeoCities Help Forums
 
 
 GGeeociitties s-shhakes itts mmonnneyy maakkkers
(Outdated rant)
 
WARNING: This first thing is old and probably out of date (back from mid '97 probably), but the message holds true nonetheless...
 
From the files of : "If it sounds too good to be true..."  Free Email address? Free Web space? 2 Megabytes FREE? No way? Way!  That's right, folks. Geocities will host your Web page, up to 2MB, absolutely free of charge. Their expert staff work round-the-clock to keep everything working in tip-top shape, and quickly remedy any problems that do arise. Sound too good to be true? That's what a lot of other people are thinking, too. Geocities is a corporation. If a corporation gives its product away free, it does not make money. Corporations must make money. If they do not make enough money to sustain themselves, they will go bankrupt and cease to exist. (Web servers aren't cheap, and GC has a ton of 'em!) Granted, there are a few special souls who opt for the Geocities "premium" service, which includes 10MB of space and having to type less crap to get to it. But these users are few and far between, and surely do not provide enough income. So what keeps Geocities afloat? Read on. By recruiting more and more new "homesteaders", they increase the number of Web sites under the www.geocities.com domain name. Most, if not all, of these homesteaders will eventually want to register themselves on every search engine imaginable to get more hits to their site, as well as for the 'incentives' Geocities gives for higher hit-counts (These include entries into contests, eligibility for special promotions (maybe Featured Page), and of course GeoRewards, which includes per-hit points redeemable at their online Geo-Store and homesteader banner exposure based on the number of hits the site receives times number of GeoGuides on the site-- more on those later). With everyone competitively striving for hits, Geocities ensures that many people will visit the hosted sites, in which case not only the site itself but the Geocities name is exposed to the viewer- Geocities becomes a household name. Now suppose the viewer is, say, an advertiser looking for somewhere to stick one of those loud, obtrusive flashing ad banners. If every other site he sees on any search is on a Geocities server, it must be a very popular place. Just wait, my friend, the ads will start flowing in. Waltz onto any random site on Geocities, and you're likely to see one of these:
 
(GeoGuide)
This benign-looking applet is known as a GeoGuide. The ubiquitous GeoGuide is everywhere, including every main page of this site. The reason is simple: For every page someone views containing a GeoGuide, they get another spot in the banner rotations. There's that word again, banner. Touted as a tool to help navigate GeoCitizen sites, the GeoGuide is a far cry from serving its purpose. Doesn't it look more like a tool an advertiser could use to hock their products on your site? Conventional wisdom pinpoints the GeoGuide as the perfect advertising tool. Right now this beast is in hibernation, referred to by Geo execs as "beta testing", serving to boast only fellow homesteaders' pages for the time being. Once the Geoguide is out of its beta phase and has proven its popularity, let the show begin! Geocities has recently added cookies to its repertoire of sneaky information-gathering tools. The purpose of these cookies, according to the Geocities, is to help them improve the content and structure of their domain. The real purpose of cookies, however, is much more sinister: they track your movements throughout the domain, giving GC a strong indication of your likes and interests, and generally violate your privacy. This and many other websites are firmly against the use of cookies, and we urge you to disable cookies (if your browser has this option), even if it means we don't get credit from GeoGuide hits. Cookie Central,  Fravia's cookie page and this Privacy Risks page will hopefully give you more info on cookies. And if you're just looking for a good scare, check out our Cookie Security Demonstration page and see what we already know about your viewing habits. In the mood for propaganda? Wade into the pile of sh*t otherwise known as Microsoft's cookie propaganda page. But be warned: You'll need much more than a grain of salt. Just because it's free now, don't expect it to stay that way. No signs of fee-required service have been seen yet, but it would be all too easy to say, "Okay folks: from now on, if you wanna stay you've gotta pay. Otherwise your site will be deleted." I'm sure many of us have worked long and hard to create their masterpieces of HTML, and would rather pay a monthly fee than have all their hard work deleted.

                          --This theory provided anonymously, edited somewhat to fit the content of this site.

Update: Geocities already has started advertising with the Geoguide. The next time one of these damn Geoguides pops up, you're more likely to see an ad for Surplusdirect than a fellow homesteader's banner. AND THEY ARE WATCHING YOU! They know what your viewing habits are, what you're using, your interests, etc. and are using you to get rich. Check out http://www.geocities.com/mediakit/mk_targeting.html to see how closely your surfing habits are being scrutinized... 
 

 
Another update: Remember when you first created your own banner (if you did at all) and applied to have it entered into the rotations? Remember when the Geos explicitly said no animated GIFs? They won't work, and they may crash something, etc, or so the line went. Well guys, they lied. If you've seen any Geoguides lately, you'll have no doubt seen an advertisement for that Surplusdirect company we've already griped so much about. Next time you see one of their ads, try this: Scroll down until the Geoguide with the offending ad is offscreen, then scroll back up. Notice something different? It's not your eyes, that banner did change- behind your back! To avoid being too conspicuous with their multiple assaults, the Geoguide insidiously waits 'til it knows you're not watching, then POOF! Switcho-cambio. Java has a convenient feature built-in that allows an applet to sense that it can no longer be seen; the 'Guide is using that feature to sneak in extra ad-hits. (Please note: All references to the GeoGuide in this article refer to the old Java applet version which is no longer available; this is quite different from the newer server-include Guide that plagues these pages, and the two are quite different. Rather than rewrite this little rant, we're just sticking this disclaimer in.)
Update #3: Do you hate spam? Geocities has decided to sell YOUR Email addresses to advertisers for 15-20¢ apeice. Point a browser window at this article, slightly outdated but nonetheless informative. In the meanwhile, your close personal friends here at Snicker will be doing a little undercover work and go behind the scenes of Geocities' advertising department. So far they have proved unresponsive to Emails in which we pose as potential advertisers looking for information. But there are other ways....
 Update #4: Geocities has begun to implement some more exploitive and onerous advertising schemes including GeoStitials, mandatory commercials that appear before your page does and camp on your screen for ten seconds, and GeoPops, ad windows that pop up on top of Geocities pages and (as a side effect) siphon away system memory until your browser/computer crashes. Needless to say, the GeoPublic's response has not been favorable. This page includes (or did include; its creator, like so many others, has relocated to another server) information on these cheap tricks and an agitated call to action against them. The Geocities discussion forums have been inundated with gripes and complaints such as this one:
 
GET LOST GEOSTITIALS 
by PaperbackWriter, 11/13/97 

We've got to get rid of these Geo-Cash Cows. This is such an infringement on our hard work and artistic rights. These were not a 
part of the original deal I accepted with GeoCities.  

Someone better realize they're just biting the many hands that feed them.  

Be sure to tell GeoCities what you think, and don't believe the comments that they "choose" to print (read create!)  

I hear Tripod is doing a whopping business. 
 
Hmmm, I see we're not the only ones to notice the descrepancy between the sampling of views presented on the Geostitials feedback page and actual input from actual homesteaders in the discussion groups. We side with with PaperbackWriter fully on this issue. While we understand that Geocities does have to pay for itself somehow, we feel they have indeed crossed the line into mass commercialization, exploitation, and greed. 


 
GeoCities is a service mark of GeoCities Corp. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders. See Page o' Disclaimers for more. If you do criticise GeoCities, it's a good idea to have one of these, or those bastards will come after you like you would not believe...